h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

These are amazing plants, and I've never seen anything like them. I just hope they don't start stomping down the street.

There is a wild plant in England called the Vipers Bugloss (Echium Vulgare) but these are quite small, with purple flowers.

Hullo mvp!

heheheh, yes, one wouldn't want to encounter them on the High St.

The advance of the peculiar plant entities. Although they'd have to socially distance. Oh no, wait, they wouldn't, they're plants.

These are Echium Pininana, Giant Viper's Bugloss, or Snow Towers. I saw them for the first time in early summer, in someone's garden, with white flowers on the towers.

I'd never seen anything like them and had to search Google to find out what they were!

These ones I caught up with later, in the Kipling Gardens, Rottingdean. The flowers were gone, but I think they are the more common blue flowered variety.

They self seed very easily.

They became my lucky plant. I chat to them. I'll always associate them with cycling around alone, on a local exercise break during lockdown.

They've all fallen down now, turning to mulch perhaps.

I asked some gardeners, the next generation of towers won't be back for maybe two years. 'Bye towers. Who will I talk to now?